Today a large number of companies are greatly expanding their use of UAVs. UAVs have been used for military applications, search-and-rescue missions, scientific research, delivering goods, and other uses. UAVs can include a plurality of airborne platforms or air vehicles, each carrying a plurality of sensors that may be used to collect information about an area under surveillance or to deliver a payload to a certain location. The airborne platforms may communicate with users, which may include persons or equipment, that desire access to data collected by the sensors or desire to control the UAV. More sophisticated UAVs have built-in control and/or guidance systems to perform low-level human pilot duties, such as speed and flight path surveillance, and simple pre-scripted navigation functions.
Initial deployment of UAVs uses normal static or semi-static databases for pre-configured routes and for the communication with different groups of UAVs. This serves well for the basic UAV operations, but due to the dynamic changing of the environment and service provider policies, etc. static behaviors of the UAVs are very limiting. More dynamic capabilities and enhancements are needed to bring greater value to the use of UAVs.
In addition, UAVs flying in the sky may also pose potential risks, for instance, at public gatherings or during local or national emergency situations. There are a number of methods to communication with UAVs and giving instructions e.g. using point to point communication between Command and Control Center (CCC) and each UAV, Satellite, and even Wi-Fi for short range UAVs. However, these existing approaches are inefficient and often times cost-prohibitive. Thus there is a need for more efficient way of communicating with a group of UAVs in a geographic area or region.